President Trump’s first 100 days in office have included 143 executive orders, eight declared national emergencies, hundreds of January 6 pardons, DOGE, deportations, a war against higher education, an actual trade war, Liberation Day, MAHA, the return of the Iran deal, McDonald’s on Air Force One, Teslas on the South Lawn of the White House, lots of grant-freezing, a Zelensky showdown, the Gulf of America, the triumph of the plastic straw and, of course, Signalgate.
In other words, there’s a lot to make sense of. So we asked trusted writers, contributors, and friends of The Free Press to help us.
Reihan Salam on Golden Opportunities
Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election because he managed to convince a critical mass of voters that he was saner and less ideologically driven than Kamala Harris, who came to represent the censoriousness, hypocrisy, and incompetence of peak blue-state progressivism.
He made striking gains among Hispanic and Asian voters and younger voters, especially in immigrant-rich, blue-state neighborhoods, where border chaos, the cost of living, public disorder, and bewilderment at the excesses of the identitarian left contributed to a deep sense of discontent.
In his first 100 days, President Trump had a golden opportunity to further broaden his coalition. By concentrating his efforts on a few popular goals, such as securing the funding he needed to strengthen immigration enforcement, easing the way for domestic energy production, cracking down on unlawful racial preferences in higher education, and working with allies to isolate an expansionist China, he could have defanged and divided his opposition and racked up win after win.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Free Press (paywall)
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Reihan Salam is the president of the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
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